Aquinas and Massa Damnata: A Brutish Take from a Subtle Mind
As I haven't written or recorded anything in over a year, something I've done before, I figured I would post my brief critique on a section in Aquinas's writings on predestination. Philosophically, I'm still fairly Thomistic, but I have been having issues with Aquinas' theology. This post may in fact be the first of a series of critiques of not only massa damnata , viz., the view that the majority of mankind is damned forever, but of a certain traditional Western understanding of damnation in general that I have come to find unsatisfactory. Enough of the detour; let's get into the topic. To begin, in Article 7 on the question of Predestination in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas poses the question of whether the number of the predestined is certain. The hypothetical objector in Objection 3 supposes that, in the works of nature, good is found in the majority of things, so if the number of the predestined are fixed, then ...